"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,"
though the crown be only the chaplet of a Republic.
This man had filled the measure of American ambition, but the remembered brightness of his face was in strange contrast with the weary, haggard look it now wore, and his blushing honors seemed pallid and ashen. There was the same honest, kindly tone—the same fund of humorous anecdote—the same genuineness; but the old, free, lingering laugh was gone.
"Mr. Douglas," remarked the President, "spent three hours with me this afternoon. For several days he has been too unwell for business, and has devoted his time to studying war-matters, until he understands the military position better, perhaps, than any one of the Cabinet. By the way," continued Mr. Lincoln, with his peculiar twinkle of the eye, "the conversation turned upon the rendition of slaves. 'You know,' said Douglas, 'that I am entirely sound on the Fugitive Slave Law. I am for enforcing it in all cases within its true intent and meaning; but, after examining it carefully, I have concluded that a negro insurrection is a case to which it does not apply.'"
Panic in Washington.
I had not come north a moment too early. The train which brought me from Richmond to Acquia Creek was the last which the Rebel authorities permitted to pass without interruption, and the steamer, on reaching Washington, was seized by our own Government, and made no more regular trips. Before I had been an hour in the Capital, the telegraph wires were cut, and railway tracks in Maryland torn up. Intelligence of the murderous attack of a Baltimore mob on the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, en route for Washington, startled the town from its propriety.
Chaos had come again. Washington was the seat of an intense panic. An attack from the Rebels was hourly expected, and hundreds of families fled from the city in terror. During the next two days, twenty-five hundred well-officered, resolute men could undoubtedly have captured the city. The air was filled with extravagant and startling rumors. From Virginia, Union refugees were hourly arriving, often after narrow escapes from the frenzied populace.
Massachusetts soldiers, who had safely run the Baltimore gantlet of death, were quartered in the United States Senate Chamber. They had mustered with characteristic promptness. At 5 o'clock one evening, a telegram reached Boston asking for troops for the defense of the imperiled Capital. At 9 o'clock the next morning, the first company, having come twenty-five miles from the country, stacked arms in Faneuil Hall. At 5 o'clock that night the Sixth Regiment, with full ranks, started for Washington. They were fine-looking fellows, but greatly embittered by their Baltimore experience. In a very quiet, undemonstrative way, they manifested an earnest desire for immediate and active service.
"Came Out to Fight!"
The bewilderment and terror which had so long rested like a nightmare on the National authorities—which for months had left almost every leading Republican statesman timid and undecided—was at last over. The echoes of the Charleston guns broke the spell! The masses had been heard from! Then, as at later periods of the war, the popular instinct was clearer and truer than all the wisdom of the politicians.